Schools and universities in Cameroon have opened Monday with hundreds of thousands going to class, despite the number of COVID-19 infections continuing to increase. Cameroon so far has 6,380 confirmed cases of the virus with 273 deaths.  But officials say the increasing number of recoveries from the virus and health measures taken at schools makes them confident that they can handle the pandemic. 

Speaking on Cameroon state media CRTV on Sunday, Cameroon prime minister Joseph Dion Ngute said president Paul Biya ordered schools that he closed last March 17 as part of measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus to reopen on June 1st because 3, 630 of the 6, 380 COVID-19 patients in the central African state have recovered from the killer disease indicating that the strategy put in place by the government to protect its citizens from the coronavirus is yielding posotive results. 

The prime minister said a majority of the 2, 300 active COVID-19 patients were responding to treatment and that enough measures have been taken to reduce the risk of contamination at school. 

“Let us not give into panic,” he said. “The ministers concerned have been instructed to ensure that protective masks are worn and that social distancing is respected. They should also make available the required sanitary kits such as hand sanitizers and hand washing buckets in each establishment.” 

Ngute said all schools will be disinfected at least three times a week and that schools that lack water will be provided with the liquid daily by the government. Ngute said not more than 24 children will be admitted in classrooms and that only one will sit on a bench instead of four or five as has been the practice. 
 
But 19-year-old Velma Soli says the government did not respect its promises and she decided to return home. 

“I went to school and I discovered that the face masks and hand sanitizers were not available as the government said so I decided to come back to the house and wait. When the hand sanitizers and face masks are ready, I will go back to school,” she said.

Teachers and university lecturers complained that some classes and lecture halls were congested and there was lack of water and soap to wash hands in some establishments.  

Naloca Lyonga, Cameroon minister of secondary education says while the government is struggling to provide what is needed to protect children and teachers at school, parents should also make an effort to provide their kids with what is needed to reduce COVID-19 spread and make sure children have their rights to be educated in spite of coronavirus threats. 

“Do we want to stay at home for ever because there is a virus? No. So this is the time when we should support the leadership of Cameroon,” said Lyonga. “We have made sure that everybody who is involved is going to be covered as far as masks are concerned, as far as the water in the schools are concerned.” 

Lyonga said after Monday’s return of high school students who will be writing their General Certificate of Education and those of primary school age who will sit the First School Leaving Certificate Examination, the government will for three days observe if the students and teachers are behaving well to stop COVID-19 spread before allowing their peers of other classes to start school on Thursday. 
 
The government said although schools and universities reopened effectively in spite of the coronavirus spread, hundreds of parents especially in the towns of Yaounde, Douala and Bafoussam, that have recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Cameroon, did not send their children to school. 

The French Embassy in Yaounde asked its citizens not to allow their children to go to school because, according to them, Cameroon’s capacity to take care of COVID-19 cases continue to reduce as the number of positive cases increase.  

Source: VOA

The names of my classmates in the photograph, from left to right, are:  John Nsoyenika Obanus Vega, who later became a Surveyor; Thomas Mbua Ndoko, who later became a Civil Administrator;  Stephen Mokosso Ndeley, who later became Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly; Daniel Agbor Tiku, who later became an Agriculturist;  My humble self, who later became a Chartered Accountant, but now a Politician; Godfrey Layu, who later became a Barrister-at-Law; Jacob Achidi Kisob who later became Cameroon’s  Ambassador to the United Kingdom; Michael Njamfa, who later became an Agriculturist;  Stephen Nyenti, who later became Chief Nyenti, a Traditional Ruler and Politician.

 I must inform you that my classmates have all ascended into Heaven, and I am the only slow survivor, repeating a class because of unfinished homework which, when completed, I too will get promoted to Paradise!     Oma nanu  Mola

The dismissal of a university law lecturer and human rights defender who set an examination question considered by the Cameroon government to be ‘seditious’ has been widely criticised by a number of the country’s academics.

Dr Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, formerly a lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Buea, an English-speaking university in a predominantly French-speaking region, was suspended by his university following a complaint by the Minister of Higher Education Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo to the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Ngomo Horace Manga, about a question he set in a law paper.

The examination question causing the offence was: “The Anglophone Crisis since 2016 was caused by the lawyers’ and teachers’ strike. Assess the validity of this statement.”

Agbor Balla, who is also head of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, was given 24 hours to appear before a university panel on 5 May to explain why disciplinary action should not be taken against him for including such a question in the paper and breaching the university’s code of ethics.

Agbor Balla told the university he was ready to appear before the panel despite the short notice on condition he first appeared before a preliminary sub-committee – in accordance with the laws of the university. However, that request was rejected and he was summarily dismissed the following day for ‘insubordination’.

According to Human Rights Watch, Agbor Balla was arrested in January 2017 for leading peaceful protests in Buea along with other Anglophone activists. Charged by a military court under the anti-terrorism law, he was released in August 2017 and the charges were dropped.

Double standards?

In an exclusive interview with University World News, Agbor Balla said he was determined to make use of legal options to obtain redress for what he called the illegal termination of his appointment.

University World News can report that a question similar to that posed by Agbor Balla was set by a professor of law at the University of Yaoundé II – a Francophone university – in an examination conducted by the faculty of laws and political science in January. A copy of the paper has been seen by University World News. The question was: “The Anglophone problem in its new development since 2016: Is it nationalism or ethnicity? Discuss.”

Despite the similarity of the questions, no action was taken against the Yaoundé II lecturer, leading many university teachers and observers of university affairs to claim a case of double standards on the part of the minister of higher education who was himself once a lecturer in a Cameroonian university.

According to commentator John Menkefor, based in Bamenda, the incident has “all the hallmarks of the Anglophone-Francophone divide in Cameroon”.

In an interview on Zenger, Menkefor said the minister’s failure to take action in similar cases suggests that “the two parts are held to two different standards, defined by unspecified political considerations. These considerations can be partly conceived and used as instruments of political control of Anglophones.”

According to a Human Rights Watch report, a Ministry of Higher Education representative told Radio France Internationale that Agbor Balla had “turned a classroom into a political space”.

Interviewed by Zenger, Registrar of the University of Buea Professor Ernest Lytia Molua is reported to have said that Agbor Balla’s “invitation” to a disciplinary panel “was a privilege Buea University accorded him on humanitarian grounds, since he had run out of contract”.

“The University of Buea extended to him a verbal gentlemanly collaboration, which he has finally abused by intoxicating 17- and 18-year-old students on his political showmanship,” Molua is reported to have said.

Marginalisation

In an exclusive interview with University World News, Willy Nze Ngwa, a professor in the Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Yaoundé I, said the incident exposed the “hidden hand of political intimidation, another manifestation of Anglophone marginalisation in Cameroon”.

He said there was nothing offensive in the set question. “The topic set by Agbor Balla is topical and should be encouraged to open debates aimed at rolling back the conflict. If the question is offensive, then all those other lecturers should be sanctioned,” he said.

On the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current conflict in Anglophone Cameroon, he said: “Peace is an empty slogan if not weaved around social justice. Peace is the consequence of concrete actions aimed at rolling back conflict. The Anglophone Crisis could be resolved by publicly acknowledging the existence of marginalisation and by tackling the root causes of the crisis, engaging in frank dialogue, free from emotions and obsessions… [It requires the country] to genuinely correct future marginalisation through legislative dispositions and, of course, conduct a referendum to determine what the people really want.”

The dismissal of Agbor Balla has drawn widespread criticism. By 15 May, 65 national, regional and international civil society organisations had reportedly added their names to a petition to have him reinstated.

Criticisms

And even Francophone intellectuals have come out to openly condemn the actions of the minister and the university.

In a widely circulated open letter titled “Affaire Agbor Balla”, addressed to the minister, Professor Ambroise Kom, internationally renowned post-independence literary critic and former teacher of African literature at the University of Yaoundé I, accused the minister, once a university colleague, of not doing enough to protect the country’s university system from external interference in the domestic affairs of tertiary institutions.

Kom, also a co-founder of a private Francophone university, Universite des Montagnes, reminded the minister of what he described as his unjustified harassment by security agencies when his examination questions were sent by university authorities for scrutiny to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

He recalled that Dr Issidor Noumba, a member of the economics department at the University of Yaoundé I, had also been dismissed from the university because one of the examination questions he set was interpreted as a question which could threaten the peace and security of Cameroon.

“Thus the dismissal of Dr Agbor Balla is an integral part of a tradition of academic repression undertaken by the government via university authorities,” he wrote.

In another open letter to the minister, Dr Ludovic Lado, a former senior lecturer in the faculty of social sciences and management at the Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaoundé, criticised the method used to terminate the appointment of Agbor Balla.

“You did not allow due process to follow its full course before forcing the hands of the vice-chancellor to get rid of him,” he wrote.

Ludovic Lado took issue with the reasons given by the vice-chancellor in an interview with a local tabloid, The Sun, in which he accused Agbor Balla of setting an examination question which was biased and partisan in nature.

Reminding the minister and the vice-chancellor to allow for the full implementation of academic freedom, Ludovic Lado urged the university authorities to reinstate Agbor Balla to his post.

Culled from University World News

A group of trade unions in Cameroon’s education sector has opposed the government’s plan to reopen schools on June 1 for students of examination classes.

The unions said opening schools exposes students and teachers to the Covid-19 coronavirus.

According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Central African country had recorded 4,890 positive cases, 165 deaths and 1,865 recoveries by Monday.

The country reported its first case of the coronavirus on March 6.

In a petition to the Prime Minister and head of government, Mr Joseph Dion Ngute, some 19 trade unions, including the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union (CATTU) and Teachers’ Association of Cameroon (TAC), urged the government to suspend the opening of schools and only evaluate students on work already covered.

Should the government want to still reopen schools, it should provide protective equipment for stakeholders for their safety.

“The distribution of [free] face masks and alcohol-based hand sanitisers is the only means to ensure equal protection of all actors in the face of the coronavirus pandemic,” the petition written in French reads.

The petitioners said students unable to acquire face masks might not be accepted on school campuses because of the directive to wear face masks, hence the government should provide them.

They added that the government should then limit the number of students to 24 per class.

Cameroon closed schools and suspended international passenger flights in mid-March as part of the measures to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Authorities also ordered the compulsory wearing of face masks in public, prohibited gatherings of more than 50 people, and closed bars, restaurants and leisure spots from 6pm. The government also placed restrictions on urban and inter-urban travel and regulated the flow of consumers in markets and shopping centres.

However, last month, the government relaxed the restrictive measures.

Prime Minister Ngute said the restrictions had helped mitigate the spread of the virus, but had also created economic and social hardship.

He said President Paul Biya had also decided to reopen schools, universities, vocational training centres and professional schools from June 1.

Source: The East African